<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Pact by SleepsWithCoyotes</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25242271">Pact</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes'>SleepsWithCoyotes</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shadow Hearts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Archival Fic, Community: newgameplus, Don't copy to another site, Dubious Consent, Multi, Post-Bad Ending, Xeno</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:20:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25242271</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Amon was drawn back in, everthing had changed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alice Elliot/Yuri Hyuga (past), Alice Elliot/Yuri Hyuga/Nox, Amon/Yuri Hyuga/Nox, Nox/Yuri Hyuga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Pact</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Back to working on moving stuff over from the spambot...this one's from 2010 for newgameplus, blue_soaring requested: Yuri/any of the guys (demons count), xeno, poly (m/m/f), dubious consent in regards to the demons, the flipside of a demon's furious loyalty to Yuri.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He hadn't been gone for long--driven out by the newest curse to take root in his master's soul, though another might have said he'd been freed by it--but when Amon was drawn back in, <i>bested</i> again, he found the landscape of his Harmonixer's mind unfamiliar, ominously so. It was still the same dark place, bleak and bare, but the upright headstones from before now paved the earth he stood on, and the gate where the four masks had once cowered was gone. He found doors within doors instead, flung wide open now, but they'd once sealed Yuri's monsters away from him until he'd called them all back again--called them back changed, like this place.  Like Yuri himself. It made Amon's wings itch, though he had <i>not</i> changed, alone of everything.</p>
<p>When he tired of his own company, he went looking for the others, but though they went by different names now, they were largely the same. Distractible Wind, stubborn Earth, capricious Water, changeable Fire. Light, more human in their appearance this time, and Dark, who practically reveled in their monstrous new forms. All except for Nox, their Harmonixer's uncertain mirror, dark where Yuri was fair and pale where he was dark.</p>
<p>It was Nox he found crouched in the withered limbs of the Tree, perched above the effigy of their master growing from its trunk. One coarse, black hand carded slowly through Yuri's hair, and Amon watched, eyes narrowed, as Nox breathed out a purring sigh. Though the Dark spirit's face was half-obscured by the white shock of his hair, Amon thought Nox's eyes were closed. The half-drugged smile the spirit wore certainly suggested it.</p>
<p>"What are you doing?" he growled, though he suspected he knew.</p>
<p>"Mm...sharing Yuri's dreams," Nox replied with a faint, throaty chuckle, talons slipping down to scratch delicately along Yuri's throat, leaving not a mark behind. "With as much guilt as he carries, he has to be tricked into his pleasures, the wretch.  You'd think he wanted me to starve. But he's much more biddable asleep. He still dreams of his Alice, you know."</p>
<p>"You go to him as her?" Amon hazarded, finding the thought unsettling for reasons he couldn't quite define, even to himself.</p>
<p>Nox laughed outright, head thrown back, the wonderful sharpness of his teeth and his bruise-mottled throat equally on display. "Oh, no. I hadn't thought of <i>that</i>." Which was very likely a lie. "No, I go to her as him, and he watches, thinking it's his own mind conjuring those visions. Or I go to her as myself, and we wait."</p>
<p>"Wait?"</p>
<p>"For him to join us," Nox purred smugly, "...or for him to order me away from his woman. Though he hasn't done <i>that</i> in a while. He's as foolish when it comes to fucking as any human," Nox added, smile sharpening to a smirk. "Once he'd had my cock up his ass a few times and didn't die from it, he began to think I could perhaps be <i>trusted</i>."</p>
<p>Amon grunted. "He <i>has</i> grown unstable."</p>
<p>"Mm," Nox agreed, hand settling in Yuri's hair again. "But he's so pretty to watch."</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>He'd heard the invitation for what it was at the time, but he hadn't meant to take it. He wasn't interested in his human's dreams or in what Nox got up to with their master, never wondered how much of it Yuri forgot upon waking or what he thought of the bits and pieces he did remember. It was Yuri himself who pricked Amon's curiosity, and the Tree was right <i>there</i>, and all he had to do was touch its blackened trunk to see through Yuri's eyes, waking or asleep.<p>Asleep was <i>most</i> instructive.</p>
<p>It was never any other woman--not the one with the sword, or the gun, or the fan. It was always the same fair creature, the one Yuri had traveled with before: frail-looking, breakable, but with the strength to uproot a curse, to die in Yuri's place, and Amon appreciated strength in any form.</p>
<p>Even in Yuri's dreams, she never lost her shyness entirely. She blushed even as her hands tangled in his hair, writhing on a bed cast half in shadow, in some bare human place where no one cared about the noises she made as Yuri buried his face in her soft human sex, or about Nox's hisses and growls as he rocked into Yuri with hard, deep thrusts. Eyes closed, Yuri groaned as Nox changed his angle, but the arch of Yuri's spine was a wordless plea for more, and Nox didn't disappoint.</p>
<p>Amon thought Yuri would pull away when Nox closed a hand--clawed, rough, hard as horn--around his cock, but instead Yuri came, shaking at the force of it and going almost boneless, still trapped between Alice's hands and Nox's. And there he stayed until they were both finished with him, radiating the closest thing to contentment Amon had ever felt from him.</p>
<p><i>Foolish as any human</i>, he reminded himself as he watched Nox pull his cock, thick and ridged, from Yuri's body. Yuri barely twitched, slipping into deeper sleep, peaceful now that he'd been fucked to exhaustion. It was a useful thing to know.</p>
<p>He told himself he didn't need to watch them again, but need had nothing to do with it. Nox had been right in that as well: Yuri pinned under his servant was indeed a sight to behold.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>"He's taking too many risks."<p>It was the girl-child who said what they'd all been thinking, staring up at him expectantly from the foot of the Tree. She wasn't afraid of him in the least, didn't hesitate to fit one small hand in his own and tug until he had to glance down at her, then tug again until he growled a sigh and crouched down at her level, wings spread for balance. He remembered protecting her village for a time, remembered protecting <i>her</i> now and again.  It was no wonder she had no fear. He doubted anyone had told her that being dead didn't mean she couldn't be harmed; all of them trapped in here with her were Yuri's creatures, after all, and she was safe from his monsters.</p>
<p>"I know," he said and watched her brows jerk up in surprise, though it was quickly set aside. Maybe she hadn't realized he could speak, or perhaps she had trouble deciphering his words, coming as they did from a throat and tongue never meant to form them.</p>
<p>"It's like he <i>wants</i> to die."</p>
<p>"I know that as well."</p>
<p>"But you're the strongest," she protested. "Can't you do something?"</p>
<p>He hesitated, and he wasn't used to hesitating. He was certain the humans were to blame. "No," he said at last, shaking his head. It wasn't as if she didn't know the truth. "The curse is too deeply rooted. Maybe if his woman were still alive...."</p>
<p>"You mean Alice," the girl-child said, nodding sadly. "He's been worse since he lost her again."</p>
<p>"That botched resurrection," Amon snarled, furious all over again at that meddlesome old man, strong enough to get it <i>wrong</i> but not wise enough to do it <i>right</i>. Why humans couldn't grasp such a simple and fluid power as Time--</p>
<p>"No, um...I meant...in his dreams," Jeanne stammered, cheeks heating as she glanced furtively up at the Tree--no, at <i>Nox</i>, who was paying no attention to them at all. For once not smirking, either. "Is that...really okay?"</p>
<p>Amon stood sharply, shaking off the child's hand and glaring at the preoccupied spirit above. The bond between a Harmonixer and his fusion was a volatile one, and if Yuri had given in to Nox's desire or despair, it was the spirit's right to exploit that to the fullest. But <i>Amon</i> was no mere fusion, and his pact with Yuri went deeper than being bested and brought to heel. Yuri was his, his as long as Amon deemed him worthy, and he wasn't about to let the little fool fail him as easily as that.</p>
<p>Setting his hand to the trunk of the Tree and digging his claws in deep, he forced his way inside Yuri's dreams and wasn't the slightest bit surprised to find what he did: Yuri in Nox's lap, facing away from the creature as he rode his fusion's cock, his skin already sheened with sweat. It was the same room as ever, but this time there was no Alice, nothing but the two of them.</p>
<p>It was what else he didn't see that kept him from reaching over Yuri's shoulder and ripping Nox's head from his body. Far from triumphant, Nox didn't look pleased with himself at all, and the look he cast Amon was equal parts relief and alarm.</p>
<p>As Amon stepped closer to the bed, Yuri frowned, eyes fluttering reluctantly open as Amon's bulk threw a darker shadow across his face. The human looked startled for a moment, shame and worry tightening his expression, but as Amon watched, wariness faded to something like acceptance. Resignation at worse.</p>
<p>It was completely unacceptable.</p>
<p>"Is <i>this</i> what you want?" Amon demanded, reaching out to close a hand around Yuri's jaw, claws drawing blood as Yuri tried instinctively to jerk his head free. "Is this <i>all</i> you want?"</p>
<p>Yuri's left eye twitched as he clenched his teeth, but his crooked little smirk might have been one of Nox's best. "Does that mean you want to fuck me too?"</p>
<p>Snarling, Amon pushed them back, both of them, until Nox was slumped against the headboard and Yuri was struggling to hold himself upright, bent knees braced, the muscles of his belly and thighs pulled taut. Amon didn't bother with niceties. Climbing onto the bed, he slid his hands under Yuri's legs and lifted, pulling him off Nox's cock and stuffing him full of his own, driving in on one long thrust.</p>
<p>Muddy red eyes rolled back as Yuri's mouth dropped open, breath catching near-silently in his chest, but he didn't cry out, didn't complain. He arched into it, leaning back into Nox, and let Amon in.</p>
<p>He had rarely seen Nox's eyes, but he caught them now over Yuri's shoulder, red as Yuri's own and uncommonly grim.  <i><b>Do</b> something</i>, that look was telling him, and though he wanted to strike the arrogant demand from Nox's too-similar face, he wanted Yuri listening, not distracted by Amon putting an upstart fusion in its place.</p>
<p>"I wouldn't have thought," he growled as he pulled out slow, slammed back in, "that you'd prefer the company of demons to your woman. Or did Nox corrupt you too well?"</p>
<p>A brief flash of panic crossed Nox's face at that, but Amon ignored it. All his attention was on his master, so unexpectedly <i>small</i> in his hands: dwarfed by him, breath hitching and shuddering out on every thrust and withdraw, fisted hands straying at last to hook desperately around Nox's wrists for leverage. It was Nox's hands at his sides that held him steady for Amon, but that was merely a convenience. The little fool was still fighting, but for the completely wrong thing, struggling to take him instead of pushing him away.</p>
<p>"Well?"</p>
<p>"At least...at least you're real," Yuri panted at last, dragging his eyes open and glaring up at Amon, daring him to argue.</p>
<p>"You've given up," Amon accused, talons digging into Yuri's thighs. "Your <i>woman's</i> stronger than you. Perhaps I should make a soul pact with her instead...."</p>
<p>"Got news for you, Amon," Yuri said with a breathless laugh, nothing pleasant in the sound. "Alice is dead."</p>
<p>"And what has <i>that</i> to do with anything?" He almost said too much, came too close to reminding Yuri that he was a god, not of rebirth but destruction, and that Heaven and Hell alike would give him nearly anything he asked just to keep him from their doorsteps. One human soul, however pure, was <i>nothing</i>. It wasn't a slip he would usually make, but with Yuri writhing on his cock, impossibly tight and unexpectedly lovely as he strained to keep up, it was hard to keep hold of caution and good sense.</p>
<p>"Death is...kind of final," Yuri argued, then moaned as Amon shifted, braced his knees, and made Yuri jerk with something that was definitely not discomfort alone. "You can't...can't turn back...time."</p>
<p>He wanted to growl in disgust. He wanted to have this conversation <i>later</i>, when he wasn't so distracted. Instead he forced Yuri's knees wider, gave himself room to lean close and waited for something approaching sense to come back to the human's eyes. "And when," he purred into Yuri's ear, "have you ever lived in a world where <i>that</i> was true?"</p>
<p>Yuri jerked again, but this time it was pure startlement, his face going slack and open for one brief moment of dawning hope. It couldn't last--Amon could no longer hold back, and that would have distracted anyone, or so he liked to think--but the wonder was still there in the human's eyes even as Yuri was coming hard, Nox's hands and Amon's the only thing holding him up.</p>
<p>"Ngh," Yuri groaned when Amon slid out of him, but he didn't try to roll away or get to his feet--likely <i>couldn't</i> after all that. All the same, he rested bonelessly against Nox as if he still trusted the creature, even now, and the look he turned on Amon was steady and sure. "If you're just fucking with me...."</p>
<p>The urge to point out that they'd already <i>done</i> that was nearly impossible to swallow, but he settled for an impatient huff. "You'll know your moment, little fool, if you keep your mind on what you truly want. And if you fail, then I'm well rid of a disappointment."</p>
<p>"You're all heart," Yuri drawled then yawned, already sinking into a deeper sleep. He might remember this clearly when he woke and he might not, but the seed Amon had meant to plant in his thoughts would have taken root either way, and with that he could be content. Only time--ironic thought--would tell whether that would be enough.</p>
<p>Nox was already scrambling to flee before they were even properly free of their master's dream.</p>
<p>"It's not my fault!" Nox cried as Amon lunged for him, dragging him down out of the Tree by his ankle and slamming him hard against the trunk, one oversized fist wrapped tight around his throat. "He was--the first time he dreamed of <i>her</i> after he watched her die again--he went all--he wasn't <i>right</i>, Amon. He went empty inside, and I thought the curse had taken him, but he just...he just wanted to forget, so I...."</p>
<p>"You did what you knew how to do," Amon finished for him, understanding that, at least. The little girl-child--Jeanne--had disappeared while they were in Yuri's dreams, he noticed; it was likely for the best.</p>
<p>Still.</p>
<p>Nox eyed him in frank disbelief as he let the weaker spirit go, but there was nothing to be gained by depriving his human of even a single weapon--and Nox, it seemed, was a better weapon than even he had known.</p>
<p>"When it comes to fucking," Amon said with a snort, "you're as foolish as the humans. You should have known you were <i>already</i> trustworthy."</p>
<p>Nox froze at that, bruise-violet skin blanching to mottled grey, and that amused Amon so much, he didn't even mind that it described him equally. The humans were to blame. Naturally.</p>
<p>But it'd been so long since he'd made the kind of pact that <i>could</i> affect him, he'd forgotten quite how pleasant the rewards of that could be.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>